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Apptio Introduces New Capabilities to Analyze the Cost-Benefit of Moving IT Services to the Cloud

New Capabilities Help IT and Finance Teams Analyze the Cost of Supporting Traditional IT Services In-House Versus Moving to the Cloud

BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - April 13, 2010) - Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand Technology Business Management (TBM) software, today announced new capabilities that enable IT leaders to make cloud cost comparisons leveraging the intelligence contained in Apptio's Cost Transparency Templates. With this insight, IT can quantify the fully-loaded in-house cost of supporting traditional IT services like email, CRM or storage, and compare that to the cost of moving them to external cloud service providers or internal private cloud operations. This enables IT and business leaders make informed decisions on which services would be the best, most cost effective candidates to support in the cloud.

Like many outsourcing options vying for IT dollars, cloud computing creates price and service delivery pressures on traditional IT. In response, IT must compare the total cost and quality of the services it delivers to the business to those of private and public cloud alternatives. However, most IT organizations do not have visibility into the fully-loaded cost, quality and usage of IT services. Apptio helps IT and Finance teams objectively analyze cost, quality and utilization data for traditional IT services so they can assess which areas of the data center should be managed in the cloud rather than making blind assumptions. This analysis takes into account key cost drivers such as annual labor and other infrastructure costs required to maintain cloud services. As many companies have learned, the list price for cloud services is rarely the final price.

According to Lydia Leong, research director, Gartner, Inc., in an April 20, 2009 report entitled, "How to Select a Cloud Computing Infrastructure Provider," companies should "evaluate solutions on a total cost of ownership basis. Ensure that you capture the differences in employee time, licensing schemes and risk mitigation; don't just compare the cloud with your hardware costs."

Understand the Fully-Loaded Cost of Cloud Computing with Apptio

As the mix of internal and external IT services increases, IT and finance teams will need more sophisticated systems to track the cost of a company's underlying infrastructure and support, allocate costs to services for business unit chargeback, and manage the overall performance of IT. Apptio's Technology Business Management software helps business leaders manage the cost, quality and value of IT services, regardless of how they are delivered.

Apptio is purpose built to help IT understand the total cost of IT services it provides to the business, and drive decisions that optimize the return on investment of IT. With this release, Apptio delivers integrated cloud cost analysis for each of its out-of-the-box Cost Transparency Templates, allowing IT to compare baseline costs with cloud offerings. Apptio's Cost Transparency Templates provide best practices in costing standard IT objects such as servers, storage and labor. For internal clouds, Apptio integrates with VMware's vCenter to understand the cost and usage of virtual machines supporting cloud services. This tight integration enables IT to optimize the Return on Assets (ROA) of infrastructure while tracking application TCO for accounting or chargeback processes.

Together, the following capabilities empower enterprises to "run IT like a business" while optimizing financial efficiency:

Deep transparency into the cost and consumption of IT services -- whether provided by traditional IT, or an internal or external cloud

Clear communication of the cost and quality of IT services to the business units through Apptio's Bill of IT for chargeback or "showback" policies

Analytics to provide a deep understanding of fundamental cost drivers and opportunity scenarios

Service utilization and quality tracking to analyze infrastructure utilization and service usage along with service level performance in order to make better decisions on which applications should move to the cloud

Streamlined budgeting and planning applications to drive more accurate planning based on real TCO costs

"Cloud computing is a disruptive force in the delivery model of IT services. For the right types of IT services, it is more agile and offers a significantly lower cost," said Michel Feaster, vice president of products at Apptio. "Every company must deeply analyze the cost, quality, risk and other tradeoffs that cloud computing represents in both the short and long-term for their own individual environment. By making integrated cloud cost comparisons and exposing the cloud TCO across different services to IT, Apptio provides the hard data companies need to make smart decisions about how to leverage the cloud."

Customers such as SumTotal and Motricity currently use Apptio to track and manage the ongoing cost of cloud offerings. With the insight Apptio delivers, some customers have calculated up to a 50%-75% cost reduction with the cloud when compared to supporting those same services internally. As the unit of economic value for IT continues to shift to IT services, IT and finance leaders will need enterprise-class management systems to track the cost and help drive decisions based on maximum ROI, optimal quality and minimal risk.

About Apptio Apptio is the leading provider of SaaS-based Technology Business Management (TBM) solutions for managing the business of IT. Apptio enables IT leaders to manage the cost, quality and value of IT Services by providing deep visibility into the total cost of IT services, communicating the value of IT to the business through an interactive "Bill of IT," and strategically aligning the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. Apptio's TBM solutions play a critical role in helping companies understand and drive chargeback, virtualization, cloud and other key technology initiatives. Organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, BNP Paribas, Cisco, EMD Chemical and Starbucks use Apptio to reduce cost and align IT with business priorities. For more information on Apptio, please visit http://www.apptio.com or the Lean IT blog at http://leanit.apptio.com/.